


Design of the Sith

by Scoby



Series: Decades of Reylo [6]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - 2000s, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Costume Designer Ben Solo, Crushes, F/M, Finn ships it, Humor, M/M, Meta, Props Assistant Rey, Secret Crush, Star Wars clothing, Star Wars props, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000, Workplace Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:53:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25642366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scoby/pseuds/Scoby
Summary: Rey is a props assistant and Ben an aspiring costume designer on the set of Revenge of the Sith.-----“Emmm, Rey, would you try this on for me? I’d see how the length looks like when moving. I think you’re about Natalie’s size.”“But not with the belly…”“Her belly for that scene is right here.”
Relationships: Poe Dameron/Finn, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Series: Decades of Reylo [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1877596
Comments: 7
Kudos: 46





	Design of the Sith

Rey immerses the Skywalker lightsaber into a bucket of warm water and begins to brush. The detergent in the water keeps foaming up, and little by little, her efforts unveil the shiny metal surface. She rinses the hilt in another bucket of clean water, dries it up and wipes with a pad of alcohol. She puts it down on the table on her right, picks up another one from the pile on her left and glances at Finn at the opposite side of the table. He has already finished his pile and is in the process of drying the last one with a towel.

“I don’t know what Hayden does to these”, she says to him. “There’s something in his sweat that turns all the hilts black after he’s held them for half an hour. Today he already destroyed seven of these. I had to run back here to get more when all of those we had on the set had become unpresentable.”

Finn leans forward to look more closely at the saber hilt that Rey is holding in her hand.

“You're right. It’s like there’s a black handprint. It must be the growing dark side... Let me help you. Just a sec.”

He picks up his own clean and shiny pile and stores it in a drawer neatly marked with a tape with printed text: _KENOBI HILTS_. Then he takes one from Rey’s pile and starts scrubbing it in his own bucket. It is already getting dark outside when they finish. Rey lets out a relieved breath when finally closing the clean pile in the _SKYWALKER HILTS_ drawer.

“That’s it, then.” Finn shoulders his jacket. “Do you, eh, want to drop by the visuals on the way?”

Rey rolls her eyes.

“I think you’re ready to go by yourself.”

“But I get so nervous around him without you!”

“Just walk into his studio, ask him out and boom, it’s done.”

“But what if he says no? I need you as a cushion.”

Rey sighs. Finn has had a crush on Poe Dameron from the visual effects unit ever since the previous crew party. Weeks have passed and it looks like he is only getting shyer about talking to him.

“No. You’ve got this. You can do it by yourself.”

“By myself? Maybe… In that case, I think there’s another unit you might want to drop by. Let’s make a deal: I go talk to Poe by myself and in the meanwhile, you go to see _him_.”

She cannot believe he is bringing this up again. After the same crew party, Finn has developed a fanatic belief that Rey belongs together with Ben Solo from costumes. It is true that she talked with Ben at that party, but rather briefly. And even though Finn found her subtly blushing and stumbling in her words right after it, that would hardly classify as a sign that would make them certain soulmates. But Finn keeps going on and on about how he ‘sees it in their eyes how they belong to each other’.

He has already a few times insisted that they visit the costumes workshop on the way out of work, casually pretending that it just happens to be on their way and they drop by to say hello to Ben. And they have found him there every time, no matter how late it has been. Even on nights when they have gone for drinks after work and Rey has passed the building afterwards on her way home to sleep, she has seen lights on behind the workshop windows.

Now she shrugs. She does not exactly mind seeing Ben, so it will be easier to just go rather than trying to debate with Finn.

“Ok, deal.”

The look of thrill and elevated confidence on Finn’s face is completely worth of this ridiculous deal.

Rey enters the costumes workshops after giving way for a few people exiting with their jackets on. Only one person is left in the workshop, tall figure hunched over a sewing machine. Two piles of brown cowls lay on the table on his either side. His large hands are steadily guiding the hem of one of them under the fierce tapping of the needle. Rey is starting to get a feeling that the costumes unit is using him as their slave.

“Eh, hello Ben…”

He stops the needle, lifts his head and sweeps his hair off his eyes.

“Hello, Rey.”

“Where did the others go?”

“They have kids to pick up from daycare. I don’t mind staying.”

Rey’s eyes flick back and forth between Ben and the piles of brown fabric on his either side.

“Do you, eh, need some help.”

He shakes his head and continues sewing the hem.

“How many of those do you have there?”

“Eight”, he answers without stopping the needle or looking up. “But I’m almost half-way. I’ll be fine.”

“You know I really could help you with something.”

He continues wordless sewing, eyes fixed down to the spot where the presser foot keeps tracing the edge of the fabric.

“Well, I guess I’ll just go then.”

She turns to leave. At the door, she glances back and opens her mouth to say bye, but he speaks first:

“If you really don’t mind, the finished ones should be ironed.”

His head makes a tipping gesture towards the pile on his left side. Rey smiles, puts her jacket and bag down, picks up one cowl from Ben’s left and spreads its hem on the iron board.

Even with Rey’s help, it takes them almost until eight in the evening to finish. When Ben thanks her in the end, she silently wonders if he has finished this early in a while. She puts on her coat, shoulders her bag and walks again to the door, but is astonished to find out that he does not follow her.

“Seriously? Are you still staying?”

“Now that we finished so early with this, I can work on my portfolio. This won’t last forever, right? I’ll need another job after this.”

“Where are you applying?”

“For costume lead in an indie fantasy movie, to start with.”

Rey looks at the folder and pencil case he has spread on the table while talking.

“Can I have a look?”

He looks first down protectively, then back at her and shrugs.

“Well, I guess it wouldn’t hurt to hear what you think before I send this.”

Rey takes off her coat again, drops it down with her bag and sits down next to Ben. He spreads in front of her a collection of fauns, goblins, elves, centaurs and humans, all dressed up in clothing that looks something like a fusion of primal and classy, with imaginative details thrown in.

“The story is something like Indiana Jones in Narnia”, he explains.

“Wow”, she gasps, eyes captivated by his sketches. “I would hire you if I was doing that.”

“Do you think this purple rose motive is too much for a goblin?”

“No, I think it’s awesome. It works perfectly so that you don’t see that it’s a rose pattern unless you really look. When you glance, it just looks menacing.”

He asks a few more questions about her impressions and takes notes. Something that she says about a fairy’s fringed hem gives him an idea that causes him to open his folder again to fish out empty paper. Before he closes it again, Rey’s eye catches a black figure.

“What’s that?”

“What?”

“There are more drawings in your folder.”

“Yes, but not for this movie.”

“For what?”

“Nothing.”

Hearing his intriguing secrecy right after seeing how gorgeously he draws causes a potentially rude boldness to wash over her. With a lightning-quick movement, she snaps the folder from the table and opens it to pull out a sketch of a human woman. A black tunic hugs her lithe shape with an embroidered pattern falling diagonally down from both her shoulders and crossing over her chest. A shiny black belt makes two rounds around her hips and her arms are covered in black wrappings. The black pants end inside combat boots and a draped cowl hangs down from her shoulders. And what she is holding in her hand gives Rey a hint about what Ben has intended this sketch for. It is a red, double-bladed lightsaber.

“For sequels?” she cannot help asking.

“I… I want to be ready to be the costume lead then. Whenever that happens. Star Wars is what I most love to design for. And… I think… the sequels will have a female Sith. I sketched this for her.”

“It’s gorgeous.”

They both keep persistently silent about the fact that he has drawn the sketch figure with Rey’s face. Trying to contain the blush on her cheeks, Rey turns the page, only to find more drawings of herself in a similar costume with small alterations and from different angles. Some are close up so that her features are obvious, but somehow… more beautiful than she has ever seen in herself. Both of them are now way too uncomfortable to say anything or even look at each other, so she just silently wonders if this can possibly be the way how Ben actually sees her.

The relief of the tension between them is tangible when Rey eventually arrives at a page with a different character.

“This is for the lead.” Ben quickly fills in the silence. “I think he’ll be Luke Skywalker’s apprentice.”

The sketched figure is in a peculiarly uncomplicated grey shirt with a horizontal pattern. A lightsaber hilt is tied to his left thigh with two short belts. The top half of long black hair is tied back. An alternative picture has an army green poncho thrown over everything. The way it drapes over his shoulders highlights the shape of the neck in a silently elegant way.

“Also part of the Skywalker family?”

“I don’t know… It would be kind of cool if he was just a nobody who happens to be crazily strong with the Force.”

Rey nods in agreement and browses through a few other speculative characters who look just as great.

“You should show these to them.”

“What would be the point? Nobody has time to think about sequels when everybody is in panic about getting this movie done. No. I just need to finish this job well, to get ahead, and then I’ll have time to gather a portfolio of lead jobs. That’s all that matters. How about you? What’s your plan after this?”

“I… I don’t know. I normally work at the recycling center, disassembling scrap electronics. I’ll probably go back there. I just applied for this job for fun.”

“And has it been that?”

“Mostly yes. Whenever the sequels happen, I’ll be back here to wash lightsaber hilts if they’ll just have me.” She shrugs and looks at the direction of the door. “But ok, if you insist on still working, I should leave you to it. I’m… I’m…”

A flush of embarrassment runs through her when she remembers how she snatched his obviously private sketches without permission. She tries to bring herself to apologize but is afraid that it will bring back between them the uncomfortable memory of her looking at his drawings of herself, along with all the confusing warmth and the wildly flipping sensation in her stomach it may call out again. All that comes out of her mouth is:

“I’ll see you later.”  
  


* * *

  
“You’re so… beautiful.”

“It’s only because I’m so in love.”

“No. No, it’s because I’m so in love with you.”

“So love has blinded you?”

“Well, that’s not exactly what…”

“Shit!”

“Cut!”

“Rey, a new brush!”

Rey is moving already before she hears it. Last week she used hours with Finn gluing little pearls in the back of Padmé’s hairbrush. Now it lies on the floor next to the reeling that is the only decoration on this set in front of the green screen. The impact of the fall has caused the majority of the pearls come loose and roll, each to their own direction.

Thankfully, they made three copies of the brush. When Rey runs to hand one over to Natalie, though, she is terrified that they may have made too few. This was only the fifth take and it already destroyed one.

Finn is quickly on all fours, crawling around the set to gather the scattered pearls. He is still wearing the same oblivious grin that has occupied his face the whole morning. He is having a date with Poe tonight and nothing can disturb his bliss, not even tiny misbehaving pearls.

Rey gets down to help Finn. She has to navigate her way among the legs of Natalie’s hair and make-up team that is taking advantage of the interruption to add more powder and arrange curls.

Following the trail of pearls, she strays closer to the reeling, where a puff of steam fuzzes her vision. When she looks up, she makes out Ben’s face through the scattering steam. He is kneeling on the floor, spreading out the skirt of Padmé’s dress with his one hand. In his other hand, he is holding a portable steamer aimed towards the shimmering grey fabric.

Their eyes lock for a moment.

Ben knows well how much every second counts between takes, but something about Rey makes him use at least two of them just staring. She looks impossibly cute like this, on all fours, blush on her cheeks again, messy hair in something between a ponytail and a bun. He needs to draw her like this later, just like he has been drawing her obsessively over the past months.

It started off by just adding her gorgeous face on some of the sketches he was drawing for his portfolio. It became a habit: whenever he would need to look for inspiration, he would start with her face first and the costume he was working on would sort itself below that. But it has slipped into studying her features every time he sees her on the set, and drawing those over and over again - in her normal clothing, so he cannot anymore justify it as work. Every piece of her is so beautiful he could drink it in.

Luckily, the night when Rey snatched his folder, he was only carrying a very limited set of drawings of her. Since then, he has been even more careful of keeping at home the growing pile of Rey in all her different expressions, from all angles - all the shades of the work of art that she is.

Ben’s stare makes Rey suddenly self-conscious, just like so often when glancing at him on the set and finding him to already be looking at her direction. She remembers how he had drawn her face close up for the sketch that highlighted the neckline of the tunic and cowl of the Sith outfit. It was clearly her but so full of dramatic and sovereign beauty that she has to be far from it at this moment. Now she is all sweaty after running and crawling around. And Ben’s eyes do nothing to reduce the blush on her cheeks – quite the opposite.

In a couple of seconds, she realizes how much time she has wasted, resumes her task of picking up the remaining few pearls and hurries out of the way so that the sixth take can start.  
  


* * *

  
“Trust me, don’t ever get as old as Yoda. When they’re making a movie about your life where you're digital, some intern will have to animate you frowning, and getting all your wrinkles to move in the right arc will drive them to an early heart attack.”

Finn and Rey laugh again. Poe has been shooting almost constant fireworks of funny stories and jokes throughout their first beers. Rey’s heart melts at seeing how comfortable Finn nowadays is with resting his hand on Poe’s thigh and once in a while letting his head fall on his shoulder.

Glancing at the recently emptied glasses, Poe suggests another round.

“I’ll leave it to you”, Rey says and stands up. “I’m pretty tired. Good night.”

Finn and Poe protest only mildly before she goes. Looking back from the door, Rey can see them already forgetting about ordering new beers and disappearing into a passionate kiss.

Outside, she walks through the lane surrounded by workshop and studio buildings, towards the direction of her home. As so many times before at this time of the night, she sees lights on in the costumes window and stops.

She has not spoken with Ben in a while, only briefly in another crew party. Other than that, they have only been seeing each other around on the set. Though ‘seeing’ is a rather mild term. Rey has become increasingly aware that Ben has hardly taken his eyes off her. She has tried to remind herself that it is freaky, but she cannot ignore the pleasant swirl it gives her stomach. Now, the combination of a beer in her head and the warmth in her heart makes her decide that nobody should work alone this late.

Ben just nods at Rey, who appears in the doorway, and focuses back on sewing. She sits down on the other side of his table and they stay silent, the only sound between them the tapping of the sewing machine on the beige-colored fabric.

Rey uses the opportunity to do to him what he apparently does so often to her: study his features while he is focusing on something else. But there has to be something different about him. She cannot wrap her head around how he can always look this good. No matter what expression, no matter what occasion, even when he sometimes has stains of textile chalk all over his face and clothes. Regardless of how imaginative and colorful outfits he can design for scifi and fantasy creatures, his own wardrobe seems to consist exclusively of black hoodies and jeans, which Rey understands because of the way how they highlight his contrasted appearance. He could as well be freshly crafted by the gods to incarnate perfection.

“What are you working on?” she asks when he finishes and examines the seam.

“They want a last-minute change to Padmé’s dress, for the scene where she meets Anakin for the last time. They want something shorter now.”

He spreads the piece on the table in front of him as he speaks.

“Shit… I think I went too short.”

Rey circles the table to look at the dress from his side. It definitely does look short.

“Emmm, Rey, would you try this on for me?" he asks in a shy but determined voice. "I’d see how the length looks like when moving. I think you’re about Natalie’s size.”

“But not with the belly…”

“Her belly for that scene is right here.”

He walks up to a rack with artificial bellies in progressively growing sizes and chooses the largest one.

“Just wear this under the dress and show me how it looks, will you?”

He gestures towards the curtain-separable changing area in the corner of the workshop. Rey shrugs, takes the dress and the round bundle of silicon-covered foam and shuts herself behind the curtain. With a bit of shimmying, she manages to get herself gracefully eight months pregnant with twins and in a piece of clothing that is something between a dress and a shirt. She becomes painfully aware that she has not shaved her legs. But she takes a deep breath, opens the curtain and Ben immerses in examining her from head to foot.

“Hmmm… It does look pretty short. Let me see you run down that flight of stairs.”

“Why?”

“She’s going to run down a boarding ramp. They want the dress as short as it can be without exposing too much in that action.”

“Really? This pregnant?”

“That was my question, too. They said that she’s Padmé.”

Rey climbs up a short flight of stairs that leads to some kind of storage room. Then she runs down and repeats it a few times as Ben watches from different angles.

“Thanks”, he says and she stops below the stairs, out of breath. She can only imagine doing the same with real twins inside her belly instead of the foamy fillings.

“The flow looks nice, but I went too short. I'll need to make a new one, or we'll add pants under this. I’ll ask them tomorrow which they prefer.”

“It’s beautiful.” Rey turns to look at herself in a large mirror on the wall. The structure of the collar would make the dress perfectly classy if it only was longer or had pants under it.

“What are they going to do in that scene?”

“How would I know? The running was the only thing they wanted me to worry about.”

Ben’s gaze travels once more up along Rey’s legs, the graceful folding of the fabric over the round belly, the shape of Rey’s chest and neck highlighted by the collar structure, and the face that he has already used a criminal amount of time studying and drawing. Out of a sudden instinct, he closes the distance between them, takes her head between his hands and kisses her.

She hesitates a moment before clutching his hoodie in her fists around his waist and kissing him back. The touch of her mouth feels even better than he has imagined. She tastes like beer and something salty. When he lets go of her, he right away backs a couple of steps.

“Oops, sorry… I should have asked or something…”

“What?”

“Like… are you seeing someone?”

“No, I’m not. And in case you’re wondering, I want more of that at some point. But now you should get some sleep. You work too much.”

He nods and she closes herself behind the curtain again to change back to her own clothes. They walk together outside and until the end of the studio lane, where they take different directions home.

“Will you come tomorrow evening? To remind me to stop working… earlier?”

“Yes, I will. Good night, Ben.”

She kisses his cheek and leaves him speechless, both walking all the way to their homes with a blissful grin.


End file.
